Gripla - 20.12.2018, Page 218

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In contrast, Árni knew current canon law and specified that “good men”
must be able to hear the woman say yes.52 I think the idea that “good men”
attending the wedding must hear her consent is a Scandinavian invention,
for I do not know of anything comparable in European canon law. But the
emphasis on consent was certainly something that Árni took from Gratian
and his interpreters.
of course, if a lawbook stipulates something, that far from guarantees
that people will obey that law. Scholars have often doubted whether Árni’s
emphasis on consent made any real difference in Icelandic society, which
remained as patriarchal as ever. the secular lawbook known as Jónsbók,
accepted a few years after Árni’s Christian Law, states, for example, that a
father has the right to disinherit a daughter who gets married without his
agreement. Saga literature shows that in many of the stories that Icelanders
told each other during the later Middle ages, the will of the bride mattered
little; in fact, late medieval sagas centering on courtship and marriage are
often ruthlessly and violently misogynistic.53
archival records of court cases do, however, demonstrate that Gratian’s
and Árni’s purportedly theoretical constructions did have consequences
in real life, at least sometimes. When the English friar John Craxton was
appointed bishop of Hólar and came to Iceland in 1429, he ordered that
copies of important letters should be kept. these copies are found in the
Bréfabók Jóns biskups Vilhjálmssonar.54 It preserves many judicial decisions
the bishop made in his church court, and these records demonstrate that
the bishop observed not only the rules of Árni’s Christian Law, but also
the rules of the general canon law.55
52 “Kristinréttur Árna,” ch. 23: “heẏra scolu oc goðir menn iaẏrði meẏiar þeirar eþa kono sem
fest verðr. ... fẏrir þvi at þat er forboðat af gvðs halfv at noccor maþr festi meẏ eða cono
nauðga.” See also pp. 98–99.
53 Jóhanna Katrín Friðriksdóttir, Women in Old Norse Literature: Bodies, Words, and Power
(new York: Palgrave, 2013), 107–133.
54 reykjavík, Þjóðskjalasafn Íslands, Bps B. II 3. Marriage cases in this volume have been
examined in Agnes Arnórsdóttir, Property and Virginity, esp. p. 134.
55 that Icelandic bishops observed written law in their judgments is argued by Lára
Magnúsardóttir, Bannfæring og kirkjuvald á Íslandi 1275–1550, e.g., 173, and by Lára
Magnúsardóttir, “Icelandic Church Law in the Vernacular 1275–1550,” Bulletin of Medieval
Canon Law 32 (2015).